History is merely gossip

Oscar Wilde was born 169 years ago, just under a mile from where, a few decades later, my grandfather arrived in this world. They might well have been baptized in the same church. You’ll have to excuse the biographical intrusion; I feel a strong bond with Oscar, seeing as we also went to the same college, though I haven’t as yet followed him to prison.

Frank Benson tells a fine story about Oscar in his undergraduate days:

‘The big, loosely built Irishman, the lazy, lumbering, long-haired, somewhat sallow faced individual with a greeny-brown coat and yellow tie, once defeated single-handed a party of rugger hearties who proposed to make hay of his rooms.

‘To the astonishment of the beholders, number one returned into their midst propelled by a hefty boot-thrust down the stairs. The next received a punch in the wind that doubled him up on to the top of his companion below. A third form was lifted bodily from the floor and hurled on to the heads of the spectators. Then came Wilde triumphant, carrying the biggest of the gang like a baby in his arms.’

('Rugger hearties' are what we might nowadays call jocks.) It shouldn’t have astonished the beholders that much, in fact, as Oscar had a boxing Blue. Another of his college friends told this story:

‘Oscar had some really beautiful framed drawings on his walls, given him by his friend Frank Miles, of mostly nude subjects; and looking round with an eye to mischief I spotted some penny stamps on the writing table with which I thought it would be a delicate attention to clothe the pretty ladies. This I did, and the party shortly after arrived. First one looked up, giggled and blushed, and then another, till the whole party was convulsed, but all Oscar said to me was ‘It’s really too bad of you,’ but he had to laugh at my inane joke like all the rest. As he never seemed to have devoted any more of his time to work than the rest of us, it came as a bit of a surprise that he took the Newdigate scholarship.’

My favourite Oscar anecdote, though, is this. Although talking in Reading Gaol was strictly forbidden, one of Oscar’s warders would exchange a remark with him now and then. The warder in question had a great respect for Oscar as a literary man, and he did not intend to miss such a chance of improving himself. He could only get in a few words at a time. Oscar later told the story to William Rothenstein (who incidentally drew the accompanying sketch):

`Excuse me, sir,’ asked the warder, ‘but Charles Dickens, sir, would he be considered a great writer now, sir?’

To which I replied: `Oh yes; a great writer, indeed. You see he is no longer alive.’

‘Yes, I understand, sir. Being dead he would be a great writer, sir.’

Another time he asked about John Strange Winter. `Would you tell me what you think of him, sir?’

`A charming person,’ says I, `but a lady you know, not a man. Not a great stylist, perhaps, but a good, simple storyteller.’

`Thank you, sir, I did not know he was a lady, sir.’

And a third time: `Excuse me, sir, but Marie Corelli, would she be considered a great writer, sir?’

This was more than I could bear, and putting my hand on his shoulder I said: ‘Now don’t think I have anything against her moral character, but from the way she writes she ought to be here instead of me.’